In our quest to bring 300 Million more Indian users online, it has often confounded us that less than 10% of internet usage is in Indian languages while in the offline world more than 90% of newspaper readers or TV viewers are using these media in Indian languages.

Today, we are announcing beta support for Hindi handwriting and ability to switch to a native Hindi experience for your Android. These are baby steps to make the Hindi internet simpler to use. We believe you should be able to use the internet in Hindi as easily as you read and write today. No matter what kind of handwriting you have, Google can help you find exactly what you’re looking for — so here’s to Handwrite in Hindi, we hope you have as much fun using it as we did creating it!

Write in Hindi and you shall find on Google Search

Handwrite enables you to search by just writing letters with your finger or stylus anywhere on your device’s screen—there’s no keyboard that covers half of the screen and no need for typing.

Here’s how you can start scribbling away online using Google’s input tools in Hindi:

Getting started is easy: go to www.google.co.in in your mobile browser, tap on “Settings” at the bottom of the screen, go to Search Settings and enable “Handwrite.” Change language in Google products to Hindi. Also add “Hindi” as a Language of Search Results. Note that after you've saved the setting, you may need to refresh the homepage to see the feature.

On tablets, the Search settings are available as an option behind the gear icon.

Once the feature is enabled, tap the Handwrite icon on the bottom right corner of your screen to activate Handwrite mode. Write a few letters and you’ll see autocomplete options appear below the search box. If one of the options is what you’re looking for, just tap it to search.

For longer queries, you can continue writing a string of characters and then use the arrows next to the autocompletions to move the right one into the search box. Remember, you can write anywhere on the screen.

Handwrite complements typing: with the feature enabled, you can still use the keyboard at any time by tapping on the search box. Handwrite is experimental, and works better in some browsers than others—on Android, it works best in Chrome. Handwrite is enabled for Android 2.3+ phones, Android 4.0+ tablets and for iOS5+ devices — in over 30 international languages.

Translating Hindi with Google Translate for Mobile

You must be wondering how to translate languages on the go or if you had an app in your smartphone where you could write and get translations easily.

Here we go: Download the Google Translate app from Google Play and change the language from the drop down settings you want to translate from and to. You can now enter the text you want to translate and there you go. You can enter Hindi text using handwriting, too! You will then be able to see the translated results.

A similar input experience is also available for you when you translate from Hindi on translate.google.com - check it out if you are interested (available only on desktops/laptops).

Chrome Extension

If you’re on your computer, you can Handwrite Hindi script into any site on the web using the handy Google Input Tools Chrome Extension. To find and install the extension, simply follow these instructions:

Go to the Chrome Webstore and search for “input tools”; or do a Google search for “Google input tools”

After installation, click on the icon that appears in your Chrome toolbar. Go to “Extension options” to select Hindi - [insert Hindi script]

Now that you have installed this Chrome extension, whenever you activate this your computer’s trackpad will turn into a writing pad, so you can write Hindi script using freehand. Then the tool will recognize your handwriting and convert it to text, which can be inserted into text fields on any website.

Switching to the Hindi interface (only available for Jelly Bean 4.3)

In addition to the cool handwriting features, you can now use your Android purely in Hindi.

How to get going: Go to settings and select Language and Input and tap on Language. You will find a list of languages, from the list select हिन्दी. You will find the interface of the phone change to Hindi.

The Hindi handwrite features have been a collaboration between teams across Zurich, Mountain View and Bangalore. Our engineers are excited with the potential these methods of inputs have in India. We hope you try it out, give us feedback and spread the word to those who would like to use the internet in Hindi.

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Head of Product for India, and Kapil Khosla, Technical Program Manager